PRISON BLACK MARKET THRIVES WITH CIGARETTE BAN

Few Penalties Help Drive Trafficking

LANCASTER - There is no if or butt about it: California's ban on
tobacco in prisons has produced a burgeoning black market behind
bars, where a pack of cigarettes can fetch up to $125.

Prison officials who already have their hands full keeping drugs and
weapons away from inmates now are spending time tracking down tobacco
smugglers, some of them guards and other prison employees. Fights
over tobacco have broken out -- at one prison, guards had to use
pepper spray to break up a brawl among 30 inmates.

The ban was put in place in July 2005 to improve work conditions and
cut rising health care costs among inmates, but it also has led to an
explosive growth of tobacco trafficking. The combination of
potentially big profits and relatively light penalties are driving the surge.

"I've never seen anything like it," said Lt. Kenny Calhoun of the
Sierra Conservation Center in Northern California, where officials
report cigarette prices of $125 a pack.

Darren Cloyd is nearing the end of his 15-year sentence at California
State Prison in Los Angeles County, for second-degree armed robbery.
Before the ban, he remembers paying about $10 for a can with enough
rolling tobacco for dozens of cigarettes. Now, one contraband
cigarette can cost that much.

"The black market is up here," said Cloyd, 37. "Everyone and their
mama smokes."

California has the nation's largest prison population -- 172,000
adult inmates. While many states limit tobacco use in prisons,
California is among only a few that ban all tobacco products and
require workers as well as inmates to abide by the prohibition when
inside the walls.

Still, tobacco finds its way into prisons.

Sometimes, family and friends are able to secretly pass it to inmates
during visits. Other times, inmates assigned to work crews off prison
grounds arrange for cohorts outside the prison to leave stashes of
tobacco at prearranged drop sites, then smuggle it behind bars.

At California Correctional Center in Lassen County, officials
reported more than 60 tobacco offenses among inmate crews at the
institution's work camps in December, Associate Warden Matt Mullin
said. The same month, cigarettes triggered a brawl among 30 inmates
on a high-security yard. Follow-up interviews with inmates revealed
the dispute was over control of tobacco sales.

At the fortress-like Pelican Bay State Prison, a felon sneaked back
on to prison grounds hours after being paroled. He was found with a
pillowcase of almost 50 ounces of rolling tobacco -- worth thousands
of dollars on the black market. The plan was to throw it over the
facility's fence.

"It's almost becoming a better market than drugs," said Devan Hawkes,
an anti-gang officer at Pelican Bay. "A lot of people are trying to
make money."

That includes prison workers.

At Folsom State Prison, a cook quit last year after he was caught
walking onto prison grounds with several plastic bags filled with
rolling tobacco in his jacket. He told authorities he was earning
more smuggling tobacco -- upward of $1,000 a week -- than he did in
his day job.

Unlike illegal drugs, which bring harsh penalties when smuggled into
prison, punishments for inmates caught with tobacco usually range
from just a written warning to extra work duties, no matter the
quantity involved.